Poladroid, Rediscover the Charm of Instant Snapshots

When you download this free software you’ll be able to use a Polaroid camera again

A camera like this one will generate your Polaroid snapshots

Some months ago the Polaroid company announced a sad bit of news: they would to stop producing film for their instant cameras, thus abandoning the technology that made them famous. Polaroid has already shut down factories in the US, Mexico and Holland and the company estimates that by 2009 all existing material will have been used up.

The instant cameras’ fans and followers did not take this news very well; many had thought this cult item would survive the digital era… and, in a certain sense, it has. Many Internet users have protested Polaroid’s decision and some have even created thematic blogs that pay homage to the Polaroid instant snapshot.

One of these bloggers has created PolaDroid, a web page that’s reclaiming the spirit of instant snapshots in four steps: Shoot- Develop-Wait-Look. PolaDroid is an image generator that imitates the Polaroid photo style. How does it work? You just drag a JPG photo onto the camera icon and it will produce your Polaroid snapshot.

This generator also reproduces the typical Polaroid imperfectionswe’ve all grown used to:

- When you take the picture, it makes that classic broken-piece-of-junk sound that Polaroid cameras made, remember?
- It reproduces the Polaroid photo’s vintage hues
- Your photos won’t be generated instantly; you’ll have to wait a couple of minutes for them to develop, just like with the original Polaroids.
- Of course… you can always resort to that old trick of shaking the photo, so it’ll develop more quickly. That works here too, but you’ll have to use the mouse to shake them.
- And lastly, you’ll only be able to take 10 photos in a row; that was the number of shots included in the original cartridge. In order to keep using it, you’ll have to buy another cartridge, which in the PolaDroid world means closing the application and restarting it.

The photos will develop in the order you create them, and a red bow will appear on the bottom to let you know the shot is ready. The document will be saved in the photo’s original file with the “.pola” extension. The web’s creator has opened a Flickr account called Be Poladroid! where users can share their images.

You can see all this in the introductory video:

For now, Poladroid is still just a Beta version and is only available for Mac. So, if you’re a PC user, here’s another way you can create Polaroids. It’s easier, although not as “retro”. It’s a web page called PhotoNotes. All you have to do is upload your photo and choose the type of Polaroid (with a piece of tape, crooked...). You can also print a few words on the bottom.

If you’ve always wanted a Polaroid camera, here’s your chance to get one at a very good price. And it doesn’t even take up shelf space.